Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/31

 back into her life when she most needed him. His return affected her more than she realized. In the intervals between his lessons she lived on this revivified interest which was daily growing deeper. During the actual lessons she looked at him with dreamy abstraction, in which he was vividly present. It was not that she was so deeply interested in him personally, she told herself. It was merely that he was a link between the then and now—his presence was almost a message from her brother. If he had been any other, she thought, it would have been the same. And then, suddenly, the atmosphere of the convent seemed to stifle her, and her heart cried out for freedom—for a day, at least, away from those brick walls and under the blue sky. Sometimes, in such a mood, she saw her old friend, unconscious of her very existence, pass her chair on his way "back to the world," as she told herself whimsically. Once or twice a half-wish came to her to know more of his interests and his life there. She wondered if that explained her longing to return to her home and her own people—but she did not admit that it did. She listened to the artless prattle of May Iverson, hoping that talkative young person would bring up the subject of the professor of elocution and belles-lettres.